It's Stupid Simple to improve yourself

anxiety

This is the latest in a Lazy series – For previous posts, click here and here

It’s hard for me to do something I don’t care about. But for things I am interested in, I find I can end up with a relentless hyper-focus, even on the most irrational and tedious of topics.

Do any of us really focus?

This is something everyone can relate to: complaining how they can’t focus on the job because they can’t get away from their Instagram feed, or getting delayed for a party because you have to see the end of the reality TV show you didn’t care about 30 minutes ago (The Bachelor can be weirdly engrossing). Stronger examples may go deeper, and contrast productive working vs. staring at a wall procrastinating while unable to think about work. If it’s so common, does that mean it’s something we all have to live with?

Q. Why don’t you just do the work you need to do now if you know you need to get it done?A. It’s not always that easy to do something you need to do, and is much easier to be distracted

When I started writing this post I got through the bulk of the below in a burst of thought and stream of consciousness, and in the following days started to edit and update some ideas intending to post it by that Monday.

That was over a month ago.

Why did I stop and not post it then? If you asked me normally I’d say I either got distracted, or needed some more time to think, or because I needed a better angle. None of those are false statements, but in reality I couldn’t write it because I struggled with motivating myself to do it.